


Bloodlines

by Fourier



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Death, F/M, Miscarriage, Stillbirth, like a lot of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:03:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8599141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/Fourier
Summary: Percy admits, at night, holding her as she shakes, that he is terrified. That he knows death runs cold and dark in his veins. That he fears, sometimes, that life cannot grow from anything he plants.

  Vex kisses him and tells him they will try and does not tell him about the dreams.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, **warning** , there is some fairly graphic description of miscarriage in this fic, as well as... disturbing baby imagery. Proceed at your own risk.

_1._

The first time it happens is just two weeks after she realizes she has missed her cycle; only four days after going to Pike to confirm; only three after telling Percival.

(He looks at her, stunned and looking confused, uncomprehending, and then joyous, and then _radiant_ , like Pelor himself, bright and excited and _gleaming._ )

But after those two weeks he finds her knelt over in the bathroom, blood slick between her legs, hand gripping the basin of the sink as she doubles over clutching at her stomach. He sucks in a breath between his teeth as he walks in and she stares up at him, tears barely held back, trying to force a smile.

“Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy, darling,” she rasps, and he kneels beside her and lets her lean into his shoulder as she cries. 

 

_2._

They try again a few months later—enough for Vex’s body to heal, enough for her to sleep through the night again, less fitful. Enough for the tension in Percy’s jaw and shoulders to reset to its natural, only half-clenched state.

It lasts two and a half months, this time.

They tell _everyone_ , in the intervening weeks, with smiles, with tearful laughter. Keyleth squeals and Pike claps and Scanlan cries and Grog lifts Percy above his head and Vax—Vax scoops her up in his arms, wings popped out, lifts her to the ceiling and spins her until she nearly vomits on his armor and he sets her down, both of them dizzy, both of them with tears at the corners of their eyes. 

The preparations start, this time. One of the children’s old rooms is cleared out, repainted a soft green. Vax teases them about names, asking how many titles it’ll have. There is no furniture, no title, not yet—just the promise of it, the kind of planning that keeps Percy busy, happy. Vex watches him fret around the castle and holds a hand over her stomach—still flat, but maybe a little taut, if she feels carefully—and laughs.

(She tells no one about the nightmares, about the oily black that infects her dreams.)

Percy holds her at night and whispers to her, to her stomach, promises Whitestone and all the land around it, promises warmth, promises summers and winters and a better childhood than either of its parents had. She runs her fingers through his hair on nights like that, through the wispy white curls, and idly wonders whether the baby will inherit a streak or two. 

When it ends, this time… when it ends she feels it in her chest more than in her gut. She is in the bath and she feels something slip out from her—an she feels the world spin and grips the edges of the tub and gasps. It does not hurt or cramp like the last time, but it _drains_ , and her heart hammers in her chest and she thinks, _oh God_ , she thinks, not again.

She sees the water blooming red beneath her—and she still feels _numb_ , she still feels _nothing_ but that sucking feeling in her chest—and she reaches a shaking hand to her earring.

“Percival,” she says, voice breaking, not caring who else hears her. “Come here, please.”

As she waits for him, breath hitching in her chest, she swears she sees swirls of black in the red. 

*

They talk for a long time after that about trying again. 

Vex says yes; Vex says she wants to try until it sticks; Vex holds her head high and declares that she _wants this_ , world be damned, Gods be damned.

Percy, though….

Percy admits, at night, holding her as she shakes, that he is terrified. That he knows death runs cold and dark in his veins. That he fears, sometimes, that life cannot grow from anything he plants.

Vex kisses him and tells him they will try and does not tell him about the dreams.

*

 _3._

She doesn’t tell him until it’s over.

She tracks her cycle, and she knows when she misses it, and she feels dread in her veins this time before joy. She goes to Pike, watches her face solemn and tired as she spreads her hands over Vex’s stomach; watches her try to smile and say _congratulations_ even as Vex’s face remains ashy and cold.

“Thank you, darling,” Vex murmurs, and crawls into bed for the day.

The loss comes early, and fast, only days this time—days filled with visions of smoke and raven beaks and fear. She cannot help but wonder if she was not ready, this time; if it was her who lost the child, too afraid to hold onto it. 

She tells Percy later that night, and he takes her to the hot springs and lets her lean against him and scream, and she feels him shuddering with sobs as well. 

_4._

The fourth one nearly kills her. 

It is seven months. Seven months of waiting, of anxiety, of hope. The first three months are nothing but fear and days spent in bed, but then—then it is the longest it has ever been. Then she feels it one day, moving within her, and she cries not of grief but of _joy_. 

The pale green room is cleared out again; furniture, this time, is moved in. A crib is built, under Percy’s direction, and she laughs again watching him. Keyleth decorates it with flowers, constantly blooming. Pike buys clothes, tiny woolen socks for the cold winter months, a little hat the color of Percy’s coat. 

She lets herself think of a name. 

She lets herself imagine its eyes. 

She wakes up, seven months in, from a nightmare of black and blinding white, in a pool of blood, and she screams. 

Percy blinks awake and she hears him, dimly, swearing under his breath. He runs—for Pike, she thinks, maybe, but there is _pain_ tearing through her, her back arching, stomach clenching desperately and cruelly as if in birth. The sheets are dark and damp with blood when Pike comes back—Percy in tow—and she hears Pike’s voice go high and broken as she says _oh, Vex’ahlia, no._  
 Pike’s hands search her body, warm and light, but all Vex feels is dark. 

“Lie back,” Pike says, and Vex tries, leans her head back as the pain tears through her again, as Percy puts a shaking, ice-cold hand to her burning forehead. “Lie back, Vex, sweetheart, you have to start pushing, I’m sorry.”

 _“Get him out of here,”_ Vex hears herself say, almost a scream, and the hand on her forehead recoils.

“Vex’ahlia,” Percy says, and she hears how his voice is shattered but she doesn’t care, doesn’t register, doesn’t _want him to see her like this anymore._

“Get out, Percy,” Pike says, a flurry of motion, propping Vex up. 

“Pike—”

_“Get out, Percy.”_

The door slams shut and Vex’ahlia screams again.

“Okay, Vex,” Pike says, and Vex feels herself floating away, feels nothing but Pike and the pain her stomach and the blood on the sheets. “Okay, you have to push, okay?”

Vex closes her eyes and fights the urge to scream _no_ , to say _don’t you fucking make me do this_ , to plead _just let us both die here, please._

Instead she listens to Pike, and she listens to her body, and she goes through the mockery of childbirth with her hand in Pike’s hand and her mind somewhere else, somewhere safer. 

It takes an hour of agony and blood and Pike pouring healing spell after healing spell into her just to fight the edge of unconsciousness. The pain hits a peak, suddenly, and a scream tears its way from her as the baby—her baby, her _child_ —is born from her, silent and broken. 

“Let me see him,” Vex begs, as soon as she catches her breath, and Pike is motionless. “Pike.”

“Vex, I—” Pike breathes. Her arms are coated in deep, dark blood, and she holds the body to her chest, out of Vex’s view.

“Let me see him,” Vex says again, panic and grief and _knowledge_ clawing its way into her throat. 

Pike stares at her.

Vex raises her arms, shaking and weak.

As Pike walks around the bed the blood drifts away from her arms and Vex realizes it was never blood at all. It floats off black and wispy, like her dreams, like her nightmares, until it reaches the ceiling and dissipates. 

Pike places the body in Vex’s arms and Vex looks down into the face of her child; into what should be her child; into an empty shell. The eyes are open and behind them is nothing but inky, swimming black, and Vex knows, just holding it in her arms, that this thing—this thing that took root in her for months, that grew and squirmed and tore its way out of her—is not, was never, human or elven or anything mortal. 

*

They do not try again, after that.

*

_1._

Three years pass and they can breathe again.

There are still nights that Vex wakes up dreaming of smoke, drifting from her mouth and between her legs. There are still nights that Percy spends beneath the Sun Tree, asking for forgiveness that he does not think will come and Vex does not think he needs. There are still nights where neither of them can sleep and they do not try to.

But they can breathe.

And sometimes—sometimes, when they walk around the streets of Whitestone, arm in arm, leaning against each other, they see children in tattered clothes with sunken cheeks and Vex kneels before them. 

“Hello, darling,” she asks, and Percy stands behind them, thinking, designing, painting old rooms in his mind. “Do you need somewhere to stay?”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr @brotherkashaw and I'll apologize to you.


End file.
